The Influence of Vertical Metaphor of Power on Power Judgment

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (2) : 388-393.

PDF(4093 KB)
PDF(4093 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (2) : 388-393.

The Influence of Vertical Metaphor of Power on Power Judgment

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Abstract

According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) put forward by Lackoff and Johnson, people understand abstract concepts by concrete concepts. Vertical position is such concrete thing for people to elucidate many abstract concepts like time, affection, power and so forth. Many studies addressed the influence of vertical metaphor on time and affection judgment. However, fewer studies focus on the vertical metaphor of power, especially among Chinese participants. In addition, even though many researchers referred a concept of “metaphor congruency effect”, no study investigated this effect directly. Therefore, it is not clear whether such effect comes from the promotion of metaphor congruency or the interference of metaphor incongruence. In present study, reaction time tasks were used in two experiments to investigate the influence of vertical position on people’s judgment of power among Chinese undergraduate students and the mechanism underlying this effect, say metaphor congruency effect. Both experiments were programmed in E-prime. In Experiment 1, pairs of words with one high power word and one low power word appeared on the screen. It was a mixed design. There were two within-group conditions: metaphor congruence condition and metaphor incongruence condition. For metaphor congruence condition, a high power word was presented above a low power word in each trial at the same time. For metaphor incongruence condition, the low power word was presented above the high power word. Participants were grouped into high power group and low power group. They should point out whether the high/low power word was up or down both as quickly and as accurately as possible. Repeated-measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) for mean reaction time showed the existence of metaphor congruency effect. Participants have better performance on reaction time in metaphor congruence condition than in metaphor incongruence condition (p < .001). The result is same with what Schubert got in his study. In Experiment 2, baseline condition was added in the task. Another thing that changed was that only one word appeared on the computer in each trial. There were 3 vertical positions (up, middle, down) for words to show. It was a within-subject design. The task for participants was to judge whether the word appearing on the screen is a high power word or a low power word. As result, participants responded faster to high power words among the words showing at the up-position (p < .05). However, there was a significant main effect for position, which distorted the interpretation of interaction effect. Therefore residual means were used to analysis the interaction effect. After removing main effect, the interaction was crossover. It supports the assumption that the metaphor congruent condition improves the performance of participants while the metaphor incongruent condition impedes the performance of participants comparing to control condition (words in the middle of the screen). The current study supports the hypothesis that the vertical position affects people’s judgment of power in China. Moreover, metaphor congruency effect includes both promotion result from metaphor congruent condition and interference result from metaphor incongruent condition. In conclusion, up-down is one kind of metaphor of power.

Key words

power / vertical position / spatial metaphor / metaphor congruency effect

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The Influence of Vertical Metaphor of Power on Power Judgment[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(2): 388-393
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